I overheard a conversation between someone on the Pixel Watch team and a woman I know. He was quizzing her at a party about what features she used - which were pretty much step counter and payment. He somewhat dismissively sneered, "Well, you're not exactly a power user, are you?"

I'm trying to imagine what being a "power user" of a watch is like. Can anyone enlighten me?

I think smart-watches are much like Alexa. What the user wants to do with it is almost totally at odds with what the company is selling. Alexii are mostly kitchen timers, song players, and light switches. No one is a "power user" constantly installing skills and using it for anything which increases the product team's engagement metrics.

The same is probably true of watches. Alerts are nifty - but cumbersome for replies. The health stuff is useful - but only for a subset of users. Seeing the time is great - but if the battery lasts less than a week, who wants to keep that screen on?

I love my Apple Watch. Alerts mean I don’t look at my phone which means I don’t unlock it and get sidetracked. I have plenty of ways to tell the time so it’s actually kind of useless for that. It’s a passable golf watch, a passable fitness tracker for running and it pairs with earphones so I can not bring my phone with me. I’ve occasionally used Apple Pay with it but that novelty wore off pretty quickly.

I don’t care that the battery doesn’t last, I’ve got a wireless charger at my desk and at home and 30 minutes on that a few times a week keeps it alive for my usage.

Some of this lack of features is self-imposed by Google.

Until they allow Gemini to use MCP servers directly, it's hard to be a power user with a Google Watch. I still dream, thwarted by Google, of being able to actually talk to my watch to have it do useful things. But since "do useful things" for me mostly requires triggering actions outside of the Google ecosystem and their very small approved list of integrated partners, it's pretty useless for anything more advanced than setting a timer.

Listening to power users is the product management equivalent of armoring the places on the fighter plane where you find bullet holes. You should of course be looking for where the planes that didn't come back have damage.

Smart watches become shelfware pretty easily. Especially when you don't have the Apple Watch cachet.

The custom complications on WearOs watch faces do it for me. I can see my investment portfolio value change right from my wrist.

I think you're mostly right. I use it for a few extra things though. Stuff I can think of:

* Timers

* Alerts

* Step counter/fitness tracker

* My fitness app for weight training - I can start a workout on my phone and enter my set/rep/weight counts without needing to pull my phone out

* Phone calls when I'm on walks and do not want to the "full phone" experience, but also cannot be totally disconnected. This paired with Airpods is a pretty nice balance

* Ditto the above but for podcasts/music streaming - especially if wearing workout clothing and I don't have a comfortable place to carry my phone along.

* Basic replies to my "important people" texts - via Siri dictation mostly

* My "RFID" security badge to get into my home/office/etc. using Apple Pay

* Apple Pay

* Quick glance to check the weather w/ a main screen widget

* Quick glance to check calendar

I liken it to having a mini iPhone 4 strapped to my wrist. Useful here and there, and very nice for when I want to get away from my phone or it's too bulky to bring somewhere. Essentially a basic flip-phone for comms, and a connected streaming media player.

Yeah I sold my apple watch after about 6 months and got a good old F-91W instead. The most useful thing about it for me was having an animated memoji unicorn on my wrist to amuse people. Wasn’t really worth the trouble of charging it every night. I just want to know what time it is.

The more power user things I do would be to change the complications on my Apple Watch to keep it in context such as AQI and or something like an ETF I want to look at or setup a world time. I frequently use the timer function on my watch and read my email and reply to emails on my watch. Less obvious is the synergy with the ecosystem such as iPhone and Mac unlocking and keeping track of the weather and using Apple Music on my watch instead of my iPhone to keep tracking my battery and flight tracking.

I also use it to keep track of ChatGPT and Claude and I think one of them I can approve tasks with.

Your observation is spot on. I wear my Apple watch all day everyday. Put it on charge every night without fail. Some years back I used to use it as step counter and for payment. These days I don't count my steps and use the phone for tap payment. I guess the watch is just an ornament or habit or ritual. I'm not sure.

> Alexii

Assuming “Alexa” is first declension, plural is “Alexae”

to me main use case of a watchin is setting (cooking) timers. Maybe play 2048 if I'm bored and cant pick up my phone for some reason. Plus notifications about upcoming meetings.

I guess approve claude things. Plus regular fitness watch stuff that happens in the background. Idk what else can you do with it? I don't do payments because its awkward to tap wrist on the terminal, but I do have cards on it just in case.

I'm glad Pixel Watch got better since gen 1 because gen 1 sucked at being smart watch and at being a fitness tracker.

I can imagine a power user could tell time down to femto second if you asked them.